


Toss Us Out to the Stars

by giselleslash



Series: Holiday Fic Series (2015) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1930s, Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Fluff, Holidays, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Romantic Friendship, Steve Rogers Feels, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5436053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giselleslash/pseuds/giselleslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky exchange gifts that reveal more than they could ever say out loud to one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toss Us Out to the Stars

Steve looks at the package in his hands, it’s wrapped haphazardly in old newspaper and tied up with twine, but Bucky is looking at him with such clear happiness and anticipation that Steve can’t stop himself from smiling up at him.

“Buck?” Steve asks. “What’s this?”

“A cake,” Bucky says and he rolls his eyes at Steve. “What does it look like?”

“I thought we said no presents.”

“We did. I lied.”

“We swore on it!” 

“Too late.” Bucky grins. “Open it.”

“Bucky.” Steve draws out Bucky’s name.

“Steeeve.”

Steve keeps staring at Bucky, giving him his best disapproving, stubborn face which he knows never works on Bucky but doesn’t stop him from trying anyway.

“Don’t even pretend like you didn’t get me something too,” Bucky says.

It’s true, Steve did. He didn’t actually buy Bucky anything but he did draw him a picture, although he thinks it’s probably a silly, stupid thing. He’s drawn Bucky floating through the atmosphere of a foreign world, a bright smile on his face as he reaches out toward the stars. 

Bucky had read _Star Maker_ over the summer and couldn’t stop talking about it, couldn’t stop telling Steve how swell it’d be to be able to go to other planets, to travel through the heavens. Bucky had read the book five, six times through until finally the librarian had gently told him that maybe he should let someone else have a crack at it. Bucky’s delight in it was infectious and Steve always listened to every retelling even though Bucky often told him about the same parts over and over again. 

Steve thinks Bucky will probably get a kick out of it, a good laugh. He’ll never tell him what the picture means to him - that if he could he would give all of space and time to Bucky, that he’d take him to every single planet in the entire universe just to make him happy, to see him as excited as he was simply _talking_ about a book. 

He wants to give Bucky the stars. Their bright overwhelming infinity. Steve thinks if he can give Bucky just a small, small piece of that he can tell him what he means to him but without the burden of actually telling him, saying it out loud. Steve doesn’t back away from anything, but he backs away from that. His feelings for Bucky are the only true thing he knows, and the only thing he fears. They feel too vast for his small body and he fears if he opens his mouth and lets even one word of them out they’ll all fly out of him in this endless, blinding burst and he doesn’t want that. He wants to keep that fire inside of him, burning and rushing through his blood and making his heart beat. 

All of it is so ferocious, and he knows loving Bucky is what keeps him alive. 

“Yeah, a’right, so I got ya something too. So what?” Steve says.

“So, a’right, you mook. Open it up.”

Steve shoves at Bucky’s shoulder but he starts to open up the present anyway. Bucky’s nearly vibrating next to him and grinning like a loon. He unties the twine and pulls away the newspaper to see a tablet of the finest drawing paper he’s ever seen. 

His fingers gently press against the tablet’s cover. “Bucky,” he breathes.

“Is it a good one?” Bucky asks. “I had to send away for it. The dame at that art store you go to to drool all over the pencils and paints told me it was the best. They didn’t even have it at the store it’s so sweet.”

“This is too much, Buck. I can’t —”

“Yes you can,” Bucky interrupts. 

“How’d you ever find the money though?”

“Never you mind about that, pal. All that matters is that ya like it.”

Steve looks up at Bucky and sees the sharp flash of worry in his eyes, like maybe he’d judged wrong and Steve doesn’t want it at all.

“Like it? Damn, Bucky, like’s too sorry a word. This is the best thing I’ve ever got. I swear it,” Steve says and knows his voice cracks at bit at the end. “The best ever.”

Something flickers across Bucky’s face but it’s gone before Steve can recognize it and is replaced by a blinding smile and a solid shove to his shoulder.

“Well don’t get all teary-eyed about it,” Bucky teases. 

Steve shoves back and laughs. “Shut up.”

Bucky snorts and pulls his legs up onto the couch and settles sideways, his legs criss-crossed, so he’s staring at Steve’s profile. His knees press against the outside of Steve’s thigh and the warmth of them, of Bucky, seeps through the material of Steve’s pants to his skin. He wants to press closer but Bucky does it first, leans into him and lightly slides his fingers over the cover of the tablet, just as Steve had done when he first opened it. Bucky’s fingers brush against his and Steve’s fingers twitch. 

“What’re you gonna draw first?” Bucky asks, and his voice is low and quiet and so so close to Steve’s ear that he pretends he can feel the warm ghost of Bucky’s breath against it.

_You._

“I don’t know,” he answers as he turns his head to look at Bucky. “What do you think?”

Bucky bites on his lower lip. He doesn’t look at Steve but at their fingers so close to each other on top of the tablet. Steve’s eyes can’t look away from Bucky’s mouth and it’s so quiet for a moment that he thinks Bucky isn’t going to answer him.

“Me,” Bucky finally says. “You could draw me.”

Steve moves his eyes from Bucky’s mouth to his eyes to find them looking back at him. 

“I promise to sit still this time.” Bucky says. “I thought, maybe. If you wanted to practice —”

Steve moves his fingers against Bucky’s.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I could do that.”

Bucky turns his hand over and lets Steve dance his fingers over his palm, their fingers tangle and untangle and Steve wonders what they’re doing. His heart is beating out of his chest, that firestorm rushing through him. Bucky must hear the way Steve’s breath shudders because suddenly his hand is gone.

“I mean I’m the handsomest fella you know so I thought I’d be generous and all,” Bucky says, voice loud in the room after the prolonged silence.

Steve gives Bucky a look. “And the most modest too.”

“Aw, Stevie, that’s called confidence.”

“You keep tellin’ yourself that, Buck.”

Bucky grins, all cocky. “Don’t worry, I will.”

Steve just makes a face at Bucky, it’s not like he can honestly be annoyed with him. Bucky always, always, manages to sweet-talk his way around everything. 

“I’m just glad you liked it,” Bucky says as he starts to move himself away from Steve. 

“Wait,” Steve says as he gently sets the tablet down on the couch next to him and starts to stand. “Don’t get up. Stay there. I got somethin’ for ya too.”

“Yeah, a’course you do even though you nagged me like an old wife for getting _you_ something,” Bucky says. “Typical.”

“You can just shut up,” Steve says over his shoulder as he walks into their bedroom to get Bucky’s gift. “I can always just toss it out if you’d rather sit there and keep being smug about it.”

“Hell no!” Bucky shouts. “I want my present. Gimme!”

Steve walks back out with his hands behind his back. “Are ya gonna shut up about it then?”

“Cross my heart.”

Steve laughs. “That ain’t worth much, how many times have I had to bail you out of something with some dame after you crossed your heart?”

“I can’t recall a single time. I’m a perfect angel.” Bucky’s innocent face is ridiculous and Steve laughs again.

“Lying through your teeth.”

“Well then, how about you’ve bailed me out with a dame as many times as I’ve had to patch your sorry face up after swearing up and down you wouldn’t get in another fight,” Bucky says.

“We’re a sorry pair, aren’t we?”

Bucky grins. “You and me, Rogers. A match made in heaven.”

“Or somewhere,” Steve mutters and Bucky laughs.

“Come on now,” Bucky says. “Hand it over, I want my present.”

Steve keeps his hands behind his back. “It’s not much. I didn’t know what to get ya and it ain’t nearly as nice as what you got me.”

“That don’t matter.” Bucky interrupts.

“It does,” Steve insists. “Your gift was. Perfect. It was perfect, Buck, and mine is just a silly thing. It’s a’right if you don’t like it. I won’t be hurt. Honest.”

Bucky sighs. “For god's sake, Stevie, if you got it for me I know I’ll like it. Give it here.”

Bucky’s making grabby hands at Steve and he’s just gotta suck it up and hand it over. It’s embarrassing after what Bucky got him but it’s all he’s got and he really does want to give it to Bucky. 

“Here,” he says as he shoves the drawing at Bucky. “It’s sorta lame. You don’t have to say you like it.”

Bucky’s not saying anything at all though, he’s just staring down at the picture in his hands. He’s holding it so carefully, it’s just sitting there in the palms of his hands like he’s too afraid to hold onto the edges. Steve wants to squirm right outta his skin.

“Like I said —”

“ _Star Maker_ ,” Bucky says suddenly. “It’s the part —”

“Your favorite part,” Steve says. “The one you kept telling me about.”

“The one I ran off at the mouth about, you mean. Surprised your ear didn’t fall off.”

Steve shrugs. “It’s a’right. I liked the way you told it.”

Bucky’s fingers finally move to the picture and he traces himself on the paper.

“That’s me,” he says, and it’s filled with awe and happiness and there’s so much Steve should tell him.

 _Of course it’s you. It’s always you. You’re all I ever draw, and I don’t need fancy paper or promises to sit still because I know your face, I know you, better than anyone else in the world. I can draw you a thousand times with my eyes closed and get it perfect every time._

“I know it’s not the best gift ever —” 

“Stevie,” Bucky stops him mid-sentence. “It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

Bucky looks away from the drawing and looks up at him. Steve feels tight all over, like he suddenly doesn’t fit inside his skin anymore. 

Goddamn he loves Bucky. Loves him so ferociously.

“I’m really happy you like it, Buck. I was hoping you would.”

“Of course I do,” Bucky says. “I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t. How could I not love an original Steven G. Rogers?”

Steve laughs. “Whatever, pal.”

“I ain’t kiddin’. Someday when you’re famous I’m gonna have this and I’ll be able to say I knew you when.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Like you’re ever gettin’ rid of me to be able to say you knew me when.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Bucky laughs. “I’ve been trying to shake you like a bad habit for fifteen years and it hasn’t worked so far.”

“Like you could do without me,” Steve says. 

Steve expects Bucky to laugh at that, but he doesn’t, he just gives Steve one of his long stares - those stares that Steve doesn’t know the meaning of, only that they make him feel jittery and anxious like just maybe he’s on the edge of something. 

“No, you’re right,” Bucky says, “I couldn’t.”

And Steve wants to say, _There ain’t a day I could do without you either, Buck,_ but just smiles and says. “Don’t I know it.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth turns up but he stays really quiet as he turns back to the drawing and keeps tracing his fingers over it. “It’s real swell, Stevie,” he says quietly. “Real real swell.”

“Thanks,” Steve says as his eyes trail over Bucky’s profile, the curve of his jaw, and that pouty mouth that drives him crazy. He might be a bit drunk on thoughts about Bucky’s mouth but he finds things coming out of his own he knows he probably shouldn’t let out. “I know it’s just a drawing of the stars and all but if I could I’d give ‘em to ya. It’d be the first thing I’d do.”

Bucky smiles slow and warm but keeps his eyes on the drawing. “Ya would, huh?”

“I would.”

“Straight to the stars,” Bucky says when he finally turns to look back at Steve.

“And all the worlds that’re mixed up in them too.”

“Just a coupla spacemen, me and you.”

“You bet,” Steve says. 

Bucky’s laugh is low and quiet. He presses his hand to the paper one last time before he stands up. “You know what?” he says, “I’m gonna go hang this up next to my bed so it’s the last thing I see each night before I go to bed and the first thing in the morning.”

“Maybe it’ll give ya good dreams.”

“I think it will.” Buck smiles and bites his lower lip. “But I’m a’right here on earth too, if it doesn’t.”

Steve watches Bucky head off to the bedroom but before he gets there he stops and looks back over his shoulder at him to add one last thing and Steve’s so far gone after that he knows there’s no turning back. Not that there ever was anyway.

“‘Sides, you’re better than the stars, Stevie. Always will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [here](http://gigi-gigi.tumblr.com/post/135288556589/toss-us-out-to-the-stars-giselleslash-captain) on Tumblr if you'd like to visit or reblog. :)


End file.
